TWIN FALLS — Four candidates vying for Twin Falls County Assessor fielded questions Thursday about their qualifications for the position, as well as their willingness to address problems in the department.

Twin Falls County Farm Bureau hosted the forum as part of its devotion to farmers’ rights, explained moderator Tom Billington, a Republican precinct chairman.

The Twin Falls Republican Central Committee will recommend three candidates to the County Commissioners, from which one will be chosen to replace longtime Assessor Gerald Bowden, who announced his retirement in October, a year before his most recent term ends.

Brad Wills, 62, owner of Wills Construction, said he would put his own business aside be the assessor. Wills has a background in land development, is heavily involved with the community and is on multiple boards.

“I think I have the most management experience here,” Wills said.

George Haney, 72, has been interested in the assessor position for years. As a problem solver, Haney said, he would “turn the assessor’s office around.”

When listening to the candidates, “don’t be fooled by smoke and mirrors,” Haney said.

John Knapple, 61, is deputy assessor and supervisor of the appraisal department in the assessor’s office.

“By law, property must be assessed at market value,” Knapple said. “The assessor’s office has no control of what the market does — we can only follow state guidelines to make sure property values are fair and equitable.”

Erick Mikesell, 67, is a Twin Falls accountant who said, if chosen, he would treat property owners as his clients to save them money. His first item of business would be to perform an internal audit of the assessor’s office.

“Numbers don’t lie,” Mikesell said.

Several candidates pointed out the complexity of the formulas used by the assessor’s office to place a value on farm ground, and the many of the factors involved are arbitrary and irrelevant. Some property owners are being taxed based on higher priced crops that they don’t grow.

“The assessor’s office is in the process of putting together better information” to use in the formula, Knapple said.

Knapple said one of the problems is that the questionnaire that farmers fill out to determine the value of their land doesn’t ask the right questions.

“The questionnaire needs to be reworked for accuracy,” he said.

In the end, all the candidates agreed that the goal of the assessor’s office is equitable taxes, to which there was no argument.

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(2) comments

John Knapple is the only "candidate" of the four who is actually truly qualified for the position of County Assessor.

Of the four men under consideration Mr. Knapple is the only registered experienced assessor who has made official assessments with binding authority under the law. Mr. Mikesell and Wills both spoke to having "great familiarity" with the assessment process via their business interactions over the years (Mr. Mikesell as a CPA representing clients with assessment concerns, and Mr. Wills as a long time real-estate developer). Mr. Wills, whose greatest familiarity with the process was regarding land ownership and evaluations for housing and business development purposes and he seemed to only recently have dabbled in attempts to understand agricultural assessment concepts. Mr. Mikesell's assessment experience was apparently only indirect, from working in his capacity as a CPA with clients who had assessment questions; at the forum he was mostly focussed on auditing the assessors office and expressing his view that the assessor should have some say in setting the County Budget (which doesn't realluy fall under the purview of the position). Mr. Haney spoke of college training in the area of agricultural valuations, but mentioned no formal use of that training in a formal appraisal setting; he also spoke of no experience with residential or commercial property evaluation. Mr. Mikesell, Haney, and Will spent most of their discussion time postulating about their personal concepts of various assessment formulas and philosophical positions on assessment theory and their perceived notions of applications of those theories to the financial benefit of various classes of property owners.

In contrast Mr. Knapple gave authoritative professional answers to questions on all aspects of the assessors office, its function and its assigned mission of following the law and assessing fair market value of property. He remained focussed on the reality of the job, not postulating on what he wished the job could be.

I think citizens should also weigh the appropriateness of a large scale developer from the community sitting in authority over evaluation of property. Mr.Will did tell the forum that he would be stepping away from his development business, it isn't really clear what that really means. How far will that stepping away really take him if he still has extensive developable land holding, and/or given that his business associates and/or family may be vested in that manner. It would be good to have better clarification from all the candidates on their financial and property holdings. Essentially all the candidates said or implied they have no skin in the game and that anyone could or should look on line, because in their view the information was there and easily research. Those statements are actually fairly hollow disclosures, putting the burden on the citizens, the vast majority of whom don't really know how to go about such an investigation.

Mr. Knapple already actually knows what he is doing, knows the real issues and problems in depth with decades of experience in dealing with both. There will be no learning curve whatsoever for this registered, liscenced and intimately experienced assessor. It seems the choice is actuallly pretty clear regarding this position.

All three remaining candidates are fine men. They will have a strong capacity to give public service to the city or county of Twin Falls the future in ways that meet their actual strengths. This does not seem to be that position given availability of the highly qualified candidate Mr. Knapple.

I wish the Times News reporting of this forum had been more substantive. This story gave little real insight into the critical aspects of this public interview of the candidates.

I agree. It was SO clear that only Candidate that would be able to step in and take over the Assessor's job would be John Knapple. If I were on the Committee, I would appoint Mr. Knapple especially since there is a Primary in May and an election in November.

Of all the Candidates, Mr. Wills came across as the least qualified. This is the first time he said he would put his family business aside. With his past experience of being a developer, it would be a total conflict of interest. Since the Assessor is over the DMV also, I would think with his family being in the auto business, it would be a conflict of interest too. The Republican Central Committee has to give the County Commissioners 3 names, which will happen THIS Wed., December 6th. Then the TF County Commissioners will appoint someone. It seems like this is an easy choice...choose Mr. Knapple for the remainder of Mr. Bowden's term and then let the people vote for the replacement.

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